He began to exaggerate his symptoms of distress, and imperceptibly to relax his pace.  On this the pursuer came up hand over head.  He was scarce four yards behind when Robinson suddenly turned and threw himself on one knee, with both hands out like a cat’s claws.  The man ran on full tilt; in fact, he could not have stopped.  Robinson caught his nearest ankle with both hands and rose with him and lifted him, aided by his own impulse, high into the air and sent his heels up perpendicular.  The man described a parabola in the air, and came down on the very top of his head with frightful force; and as he lay, his head buried in his hat and his heels kicking, Robinson without a moment lost jumped over his body, and klopetee klop rang fainter and fainter down the road alone.

The plucky pursuer wrenched his head with infinite difficulty out of his hat, which sat on his shoulders with his nose pointing through a chasm from crown to brim, shook himself, and ran wildly a few yards in pursuit—­but finding he had in his confusion run away from Robinson as well as Robinson from him, and hopeless of recovering the ground now lost, he gave a rueful sort of laugh, made the best of it, put his hands in his pockets and strolled back to meet No. 1.

Meantime, Robinson, fearful of being pursued on horseback, relaxed his speed but little and ran the three miles out into Sydney.  He came home with his flank heating and a glutinous moisture on his lip, and a hunted look in his eye.  He crept into bed, but spent the night thinking, ay, and praying, too, not sleeping.

CHAPTER L.

THOMAS ROBINSON rose from his sleepless bed an altered man; altered above all in this that his self-confidence was clean gone.  “How little I knew myself,” said he, “and how well his reverence knew me!  I am the weakest fool on earth—­he saw that and told me what to do.  He provided help for me—­and I, like an ungrateful idiot, never once thought of obeying him; but from this hour I see myself as I am and as he used to call me—­a clever fool.  I can’t walk straight without some honest man to hold by.  Well, I’ll have one, though I give up everything else in the world for it.”

Then he went to his little box and took out the letter to George Fielding.  He looked at it and reproached himself for forgetting it so long.  “A letter from the poor fellow’s sweetheart, too.  I ought to have sent it by the post if I did not take it.  But I will take it.  I’ll ask Mr. Miles’s leave the moment he comes home, and start that very day.”  Then he sat down and read the tract again, and as he read it was filled with shame and contrition.